Resonance
by Ember Quill
Summary: Ginny's experiences in the Chamber of Secrets have changed her forever. When Harry saved her, he forged a bond with her that goes far deeper than a life-debt. Two souls resonate as one as they face the brewing storm together. DISCONTINUED.
1. Scarred

_**Yes, I know, I've already got ideas for about fourteen zillion other fics, but this one refused to go away, so I'm writing it. Whether I finish it or not remains to be seen as I seem to lack the dedication to finish anything I start. Hopefully the fact that I'm posting this for others to read and that it's incapable of standing on its own as a oneshot will motivate me to finish it. Only time will tell, I guess.**_

_**Quick note: This is not categorized as Angst, but the first several chapters will be pretty angsty. My muse tells me it'll all get better after Hogwarts starts up again. I don't know whether to trust him or not...  
**_

_**Disclaimer: This is fanfiction. FANfiction. Written by a FAN of Harry Potter. I am not British, female, or over twenty years old, so I'm obviously not the author. I do not, have never, and will never own this book series.**_

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* * *

To this very day, I still fail to completely comprehend exactly what happened to me during my first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I know that I was just a little eleven-year-old girl, and I was in way over my head. I still have nightmares about it, so many years later. I still dream of the Chamber of Secrets, of Tom Marvolo Riddle, the boy who became a man whose very name was taboo. I have nightmares about the basilisk that I inadvertently set upon the innocent students of my school._

_Yes, it was indeed I who opened the Chamber of Secrets in the early nineties. This is the first time I'm telling anyone but my family and closest friends. I opened the Chamber of Secrets and let a monster loose. I'm told by nearly everybody that it was never my fault. They say that I am not to blame. Since Riddle's diary possessed me, I was not responsible for my horrendous actions. I suppose, in a way, they're right. I did it all while possessed by a piece of Voldemort's soul. Does it really help to know that, even though I did some absolutely horrible things, it wasn't my fault?_

_No, not at all. I still feel sick to my stomach every time I think about it. The nightmares faded with time, replaced by other bad dreams that I accumulated over the years, but that sense of wrongness within me never faded. I still feel as if my very soul were violated. After my experience that year, I felt contaminated, infected in a way that nobody could see or fix. But for a precious few moments, when I woke up in the infirmary, I was happy my nightmare was over._

_If only that were true..._

The quill paused on the page and a drop of ink from its tip obliterated half of the previous word. The young woman holding the quill paused, staring at the page without seeing it as memories of the past rose to the surface of her mind and threatened to consume her.

_**

* * *

Resonance**_

_**Chapter 1 – Scarred**_

* * *

"Ah, Miss Weasley, I am glad to see you awake at last."

A little red-haired girl who looked hardly older than eleven blinked in surprise as she heard a familiar voice nearby. She let her eyes focus and saw that she was indeed in the hospital wing of Hogwarts. The last thing Ginny could remember was leaving the Chamber of Secrets with Ron, Professor Lockheart, and Harry.

She suddenly noticed that all of the other hospital beds were empty. That meant that all of the petrified students were finally back to normal. Thank Merlin. She supposed she'd had a rather lucky year, as it was her first night spent in the hospital wing, though the circumstances of her visit were not exactly the best. Though from the stories she'd heard, Madame Pomfrey was already thinking about reserving a bed specifically for Harry, as he had a tendency to end up there even after just two years at Hogwarts.

The back of Ginny's neck was aching slightly, but she barely noticed it and completely forgot about it when she noticed that the Headmaster himself was sitting on a chair next to her bed. At that moment, the girl realized just how much trouble she was probably in. She knew, without a doubt, that he would be angry with her for what she had done. The first-year had put many others' lives in danger when she opened the supposedly-mythical Chamber of Secrets.

_I released a bloody basilisk into the school!_ she realized. _I'll be expelled for sure!_

When she started shaking with barely-suppressed fear and despair, Dumbledore gently grasped her shoulder. "Now, now," he said gently, "there is no need for tears."

Ginny looked up at him, feeling ashamed and embarrassed. She had once been known as the crybaby of the Weasley family, according to her older brothers. They had teased her so mercilessly about it that she had promised never to cry again on her sixth birthday. She'd had enough.

_And now look at me! I'm just about to cry for the second time in two days!_

"I'm sorry, Professor," she whimpered quietly. "I didn't mean to... It was tom! He—"

The old man held up a hand to silence her, and she complied. "Would you like a lemon drop?" he asked first. When she just stared at him, he sighed and went on to say, "No students were permanently injured or killed by your actions. I already know all about Tom Riddle, as Harry told me the full story once you had fainted from exhaustion. I know you are not to blame, so please relax. You are still weak."

Relief flooded through her as her shoulders sagged. She rubbed her eyes to get rid of the tears that were about to fall and let out a quiet sigh. "So...?" she mumbled, not knowing exactly how to put her question into words, but begging for an answer nonetheless.

"You will not be punished in any way," he explained, somehow guessing that she was about to ask that. "You were under the direct control of Lord Voldemort, so no blame rests upon you."

She felt none of the usual irrational fear when she heard the name. "Voldemort?" she whispered. "But...but he's gone! I thought it was Tom—"

"They are one and the same," Dumbledore interrupted with a reluctant sigh. "Tom became known as Lord Voldemort amongst his closest friends while he was a student here. He disappeared soon after his graduation and eventually resurfaced as the dark wizard that the general public is now so afraid to name."

_So why aren't I afraid of his name any more?_ she asked herself.

Professor Dumbledore gazed into her eyes with an usually serious expression that was beginning to frighten her. It felt as if he could see straight into her soul with a single glance and see all of the good and evil within.

"Now, Ginevra, I must speak with you about a related issue. It is of absolutely vital importance," he announced, and her nervousness doubled as she contemplated what he could possibly say next. The back of her neck throbbed slightly, but she ignored it as well as she could, knowing that Dumbledore was demanding her full and undivided attention.

"What is it?" she asked, shaking with fear. Somehow, Ginny instinctually _knew_ exactly what he was going to say, though she couldn't possibly tell what it was. She still knew for a fact that she wouldn't like what he had to say at all.

"When Harry destroyed Tom's diary, something odd happened to you. Harry explained everything, and I believed due to what he said that Tom's memories had simply been lost, gone forever. Now, though, I know that this is not the case." His chin dropped slightly to rest on his interlaced fingers as Ginny realized what he was probably going to say.

"His memories," Dumbledore began, speaking slowly as if he was expecting his words to be proven wrong at any moment, "are now locked up within a part of your own mind."

"I don't _want_ his memories!" Ginny exclaimed, furious and horrified, her terror finally getting the better of her. "I don't even want to know _anything_ about him! I don't want to have anything to do with him! I just want him to go away and leave me alone!"

"I know, Ginevra," he replied after waiting for her outburst to finish. "I wish with all my heart that it were not the case. And worse, yet, they are such an integral part of your memories of last year that I can't remove them without possibly damaging your mind. In addition to that, I imagine that his skill for speaking Parseltongue has been transferred to you as well, to allow you to open the Chamber."

"I don't want to speak Parseltongue," she mumbled, her adrenaline rush completely spent. "I don't _want_ to talk to snakes."

"What one wants and what one receives are rarely completely the same," he advised her. Somehow Ginny had a feeling that he had personal experience with unfulfilled wishes. "However, I was able to delve into your mind while you were unconscious to separate his memories from your own. It's rather crude and probably will not hold for longer than six months or so, but I will begin teaching you a special form of Occlumency when you return after the summer so you may keep your own thoughts organized without my help."

She felt a lance of pain through the back of her neck, and she absently began to rub it. She froze when she felt a scabbed-over cut dead-center on her neck. Dumbledore gave her a shrewd and knowing look as he let out a great sigh.

"When that cut of yours is healed, which should only take another day or two at most, you will bear a scar much like Harry's own," he said. "I must ask that you tell as few people as you can about it. It would raise questions that even I don't believe I can answer as of yet. All I know that, somehow, it is related to the fact that Harry saved your life. Perhaps it is a physical reminder of the Life-Debt you now owe him. Such things have been known to happen from time to time. But it may be something entirely different. If something about your magical gifts goes awry during the summer, I would greatly appreciate it if you owled me at your earliest convenience."

Ginny kept rubbing at the scab as she listened to him. The pain was fading, but it was giving way to an annoying itchy sensation.

_I'm going to have a scar like Harry's? _she realized. _What does that mean?_

"Is there anything else?" she asked out loud with a shaky voice, afraid of what the answer might be. If she had been paying attention at the time, she might have noticed the brief flash of indecision in his eyes. There was something else he wanted to mention, but ultimately decided not to. He quickly schooled his expression and smiled benignly when she looked up at him again.

"No, that it all," he said. He started to leave, but turned back as he was half-way to the door. "I must request that you keep your scar and all of what I have told you a secret from everyone for now, even your family and closest friends. Tell nobody."

"Yes sir," she answered, wishing she could wake up from this crazy dream of hers and forget her whole first year of school.

"Good," he answered. "Also, I thought you might like to know that the final exams have been cancelled. Gryffindor received four hundred points for what Harry, Ron, and Hermione did to save your life. Your house won the cup this year. As the basilisk is dead and the diary destroyed, you are in no further danger, dear child."

"I'm not," she murmured.

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. "You're not? What are you not?"

"A child," Ginny answered, surprised to even hear the quiet words come from her own mouth. "I'm not a child anymore."

"Tom's influence, correct?" he asked. His tone was even more serious than before. His eyes had lost their usual twinkle as he frowned.

Ginny nodded. "When I first started writing to him, he revealed that he could show me things too. Memories of his or just anything that he could imagine. He stared by showing me happy memories of his time at school. He helped me with my homework when I was having trouble. He said he would show me my future and I saw..." Her face turned red as Dumbledore guessed what she was talking about.

"You saw yourself with Harry?" he asked with a tiny smile. She nodded. "I thought you might have. But what about afterwards?"

"Well, after the first attack, after he had me more completely under his control, the visions changed," she explained. She looked down for a moment, but quickly looked up at him with an expression of shame and horror so profound that he was shocked to see it on one as young as her.

"Yes?" he prodded, knowing that she was having difficulties but needing to know exactly what she had seen, even though he had already guessed.

"A girl in one of my classes made fun of me for being poor," she continued. "She said that I might as well be a...a mudblood, since so many of my friends are. When I told Tom about it one day, he showed me an image of her dead body, the head completely cut off...blood _everywhere_..." She looked into the old man's eyes, and he was once again shocked to see her expression, though this time he saw rage and despair. "You want to know the worst thing about it?" she asked venomously. "I _enjoyed_ it! I _laughed_ when I saw her that way! I wanted to...I wanted to do it to her the moment I saw it!"

"And it only got worse," Dumbledore murmured. "Am I correct?"

She nodded again and took a deep breath. "He showed me violence, murder, pain, torture, rape... He showed me _everything_!" she shouted frantically, tears beginning to fall. "I don't _want_ it! I don't _want_ his memories! I don't even want _my_ memories! I want to forget the whole bloody _year_!"

By the time she finished her tirade, she was sobbing. Dumbledore moved closer and wrapped his arms around her small frame, letting her cry into his robes.

"You're a very strong witch," he whispered into her ear, so quiet that she almost couldn't make it out. "Very few people could last so long if the diary had found its way into their own hands. Many older and smarter witches and wizards have broken completely just experiencing _half_ of what you have seen. Do not be ashamed of what you have done, as Voldemore has tricked many, even those as old and wise as myself. In the coming years, your strength of will and your growing intelligence will be vital." He stopped for a moment, as if unsure what to say next. "Don't be afraid of what is to come."

Just like that, he was gone, leaving the tiny little redhead feeling inexplicably better, but utterly bewildered.

* * *

The rest of the term passed like a dream for most of the students. They were ecstatic to discover that the monster was no longer a problem and that their classmates were back to normal. Hermione had congratulated Harry and Ron extensively for figuring out where the Chamber was. Ginny was able to be relatively normal for the first time since she'd found Tom Riddle's diary mixed in with her schoolbooks on the first day of class. She was not happy by any means, but she was grateful that her experience with Tom was finally over for good. Her nights were spent tossing and turning, dreaming of the visions she'd seen while possessed, while her days were spent wandering the castle, still recovering from her nightmarish first year.

Before she knew it, she was on the Hogwarts Express. Harry, Hermione, Ron, and the twins all joined her in a compartment. Fred and George spent half of the ride amusing themselves by setting off several Filibuster Fireworks in the train, shooting them down the corridor to explode outside other compartments, terrifying some of the first years on the train. Percy eventually found out and attempted to confiscate them, but the last one had been ignited not two minutes before he arrived.

Ginny spent the rest of the trip staring absently out the window, reflecting on her year while trying to forget it. Her childhood had been cut drastically short when Tom used her and then left her to pick up the pieces. She had just noticed King's Cross Station coming up in the distance when somebody began to speak.

"Ginny," a familiar voice said, and she tensed. "What did you see Percy doing, that he didn't want you to tell anyone?"

"Oh, that," she replied, relieved that Harry wasn't mentioning Riddle or the Chamber. She forced a quiet giggle and continued, "Well, Percy's got a girlfriend."

Fred had just taken a stack of books from the luggage rack above the window, but he dropped them on George's head after he heard that juicy nugget of possible blackmail material. "What?" he asked, astonished.

"It's that Ravenclaw Prefect," she told them, no longer needing to fake a laugh. Their stunned expressions would make even the gloomiest person chuckle slightly. "That's who he was writing to all last summer. He's been meeting her all over the school in secret. I walked in on them kissing in an empty classroom one day. He was so upset when she was—you know—attacked. You won't tease him, will you?"

She pretended to be concerned for the sake of Harry and Hermione (mostly Hermione, who would have pitched a fit if she knew about all of the prank ideas already flowing through the small redhead's mind), but Ron and the twins knew her better than that. Ron was smirking slightly, probably thinking about getting back at his older brother for making him feel so inferior, as the youngest male Weasley. The twins, though, looked as if Christmas had come early.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Fred replied to her question, with a maniacal grin.

"Definitely not," George agreed, his face mirroring his twin's.

Ginny smiled, but anyone who knew her could tell it didn't quite reach her eyes. Though she was amused by her siblings' antics, she still felt horrible, almost sick. Other than a slight paleness of her face, she was able to hid her true emotions behind a smile that convinced everyone.

The whole group got off the train together. Ginny heard Harry, Ron, and Hermione talking about something, but ignored them as she walked through the barrier. The Weasley parents and the Dursley family were both waiting there, though the latter family was standing very far from the rest of the families, casting nervous looks at everyone else. If there were more unpleasant muggles in the world, Ginny mused, she had yet to meet them. She remembered waiting with her parents for Ron and Harry to come through the barrier last summer. Harry's family had been standing near hers, and they looked downright furious to be standing there. This year wasn't any different.

"Bugger," Harry whispered just loud enough for Ginny to overhear. "They found out last summer that I'm not allowed to do magic outside of school."

"I'd reckon just trying hard not to get in trouble would be the best plan," Ron whispered back as Ginny moved slightly closer to listen. "Don't do anything stupid, or we'll have to do something ill-advised just to come rescue you again!"

"I...agree..." Hermione mumbled slowly while giving Ron a weird look. She rarely concurred with anything he said, and she seemed surprised that he had voiced her own thoughts. Ginny smiled slightly as she walked with the group.

"Right, I won't go looking for trouble," Harry whispered back. "It just seems to find me on its own though. It's Dobby's fault that I ended up locked in my room last summer..." His eyes widened. "Merlin, they're going to blame me for escaping with you, Ron!"

Ginny watched with a frown as he meandered towards his aunt and uncle. She clenched her fists in anger when she saw the huge, rotund man make an expression that looked like he'd eaten something rotten. "Nobody should have to go home to a family like that," she mumbled to herself, "especially Harry! How can they be so horrible to him when he's so kind, and generous, and handsome—"

She blushed as the last few words tumbled from her mouth, mentally stopping her train of thought before it went any further. She noticed Harry look back at Ron right before catching her watching him. He smiled and waved, but she blushed again and turned away. Why did she have to be so shy around him? You would think she could talk to him now after he saved her life, but she was still as embarrassed as ever. When she looked back, he was already walking away. She let out a tiny smile when she saw his cousin attempting to walk behind him. He looked as if he were waddling instead. As she watched, the back of her neck started to itch. She absently scratched at the newly-healed wound. She could still feel the slightly raised skin there that formed a shape almost identical to the lightning bolt on Harry's forehead.

Harry reached up to scratch his own, more visible scar as he disappeared around a corner, but Ginny barely noticed as she turned away to follow her own family outside.

* * *

Professor Dumbledore sat in his office, deep in thought. He knew that the young Miss Weasley's new scare bore great significance, as it mirrored the very scar that rested on Harry's forehead. He was not quite sure about it, but if his theory was correct, she would have a very large part to play in the future.

If anyone were to walk into his office at that very moment, they would see him gazing intently at an empty chessboard and the pieces lying into a pile next to it. His eyes were narrowed in a look of intense contemplation. They might wonder what he was thinking, whether he was contemplating chess strategy or simply lost in his own thoughts. The truth was that his thoughts and the chessboard in front of him were indeed connected, but in an unexpected way.

"The war is coming," he muttered under his breath as he continued to stare at the board. "Voldemort is preparing already, even though he has yet to find a body. He is definitely not finished with his crusade..."

He placed all of the black pawns on the board in their proper places and stopped for a moment to look at them. "His Death Eaters are just like these pawns in the grand scheme of things. They can be sacrificed without much cause. His other pieces are far more important."

He picked up a rook and rolled it idly between finger and thumb, gazing at it and wondering. "His diary," he finally decided. "The diary was important, but it was destroyed. Perhaps it was more important than Lucius realized. But just how vital was it? Could Voldemort create something similar?" He shrugged and placed the rook on the board. "Expect the unexpected, I suppose.

"Seven," he continued, looking at the remaining black pieces and the one rook on the board. "Seven is the most magical number. Seven of what? That is the true question. Seven entities to increase his power beyond its mortal limit..." He placed the other rook, both knights, and both bishops on the board. "Six separate from himself, but he makes the seventh." The king was placed in its appropriate square. Then he picked up the queen. "Harry's odd connection to him is important as well..."

With all the black pieces placed, he glanced at the white side of the board. "The Order," he mumbled, placing all of the white pawns in their appropriate places. "I'll have to speak with them at some point. Perhaps in a few years though. I wouldn't want to raise undue concern. And then there is Severus," he continued, placing a white rook, "who will do what he must when the time comes." He continued mumbling to himself, deciding that the other rook represented the Ministry of Magic, while the two knights represented Ron and Hermione and one of the bishops represented Lily's sacrifice, which still protected him to this day. His hand lingered over the king, but he ended up placing the other bishop on the board instead.

"So I'm just a bishop," he mused as he looked at the piece. "I'm important, but not the most vital of all. No, that honor falls to..." He placed the king on the board and said, "Harry Potter. He is the cornerstone of everything. If he cannot withstand the pressure, if he crumbles, the Order will fall and Voldemort will win."

He contemplated the last remaining piece, the queen, twirling it absently through his fingers. "The queen is the king's strength," he finally announced quietly. "She is the most valuable piece aside from the king, but is important in many other ways as well. She can move in any direction and adapt to any situation that has even the tiniest chance of victory. Before, I thought Hermione and Ron would both be represented together by this piece..."

He finally placed it on the board. "I was wrong. It appears that this position is Ginny's alone. She has no idea just how important she is yet, but she will eventually come to fill her role in the events to come."

He took a moment to look over the completely set-up chessboard carefully, thinking deeply about the war he knew was looming. Each piece was, in his mind, a person or group that would be pivotal when the war finally began. And they were all connected to each other in elusive and intriguing ways, not just because they were on the same side. He contemplated chess strategy and wartime tactics for a moment.

Then he moved one of his pawns forward and sat back to look at the board.

"Your move, Tom."

* * *

**_A/N: That's it for my first chapter. Please review, criticize constructively, etc. Flames will be either ignored or reflected with double the intensity. If you find any errors in continuity, British slang, spelling, grammar, syntax, etc., be sure to let me know so I can fix it!  
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	2. A Life worth Living

_**Thanks for the reviews! Not much to say except please keep reading and reviewing. On with the story!  
**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. I figured you'd probably know that already, but I'm saying it anyway because I have to.**_

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* * *

Resonance**_

_**Chapter 2 – A Life worth Living**_

* * *

She opened her eyes, but still saw darkness. "Where am I?" she asked nervously, sure that she wouldn't like the answer. Sitting up quickly, she brushed her flaming red hair away from her face and gasped in horror. She knew exactly where she was, and she really wished she didn't.

It was the Chamber of Secrets.

The huge cavern was lit with an eerie green glow that reflected off the puddles on the floor. The sound of water dripping slowly could be heard in the background. She looked around and had to stifle a gasp when she saw somebody lying near her in a puddle of liquid that could only be blood. She crawled closer, but nearly collapsed when she saw his emerald eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Harry Potter himself was lying next to her, his face frozen in a shocked expression, mouth and eyes wide open. The redhead leaned towards him.

"Harry?" she asked in a quiet whisper. "Harry, are you—"

He wasn't breathing. The blood puddle wasn't expanding. He wasn't bleeding any more, as his heart had already stopped pumping a very long time ago.

He was dead.

"What happened?!" she screamed as she scooted back from him in abject horror. She attempted to run away but stumbled and fell down.

"You killed him," a calm voice said from behind her. She turned to see none other than Tom Riddle himself standing behind her. "He saved your life. He killed the basilisk and destroyed my diary, but when you woke up, you killed him." He smiled vindictively at her. "You would have made a fine Slytherin, you know."

She looked back at Harry and finally noticed the gaping hole in his chest. Collapsing to her knees, she felt as if she was going to puke as the memory blossomed in her mind.

"_Ginny! Are you alright?"_

_Ginny looked up at Harry and smiled slightly. "Thanks for saving me," she said. "Is he...is he gone?"_

_He turned away from her to point at the diary, lying in tatters and bleeding ink. While his back was turned, her thankful expression turned into a mask of cold fury, and she picked up the sword he had dropped on the ground._

"_Ginny?" he asked when he turned back around to see her holding his newfound sword. "Ginny, snap out of it!"_

_She grinned as she held the sword in front of his heart and pushed it straight through his chest._

"How could I?" she sputtered as her breathing quickened. "How could I do something like that? How could I...kill him?"

"You thought you were free of me," Tom said, still grinning at her, "but now you know better. When I possessed you, I changed you. You're tainted. You're infected. You're mine, now and forever, and there is nothing you can do to change that."

Everything around her blurred and she saw that she was suddenly sitting on a little stool in front of the entire student body of Hogwarts in the Great Hall. A hat was placed on her head, covering her eyes and nose as it was much too big for her. It was the Sorting Hat. Everything went dark and silent, but then—

"Ah, another Weasley," it whispered into her ear as she tried not to jerk in surprise. "I should know what to do with you, but you are different from the rest of your family. You are cunning and have a thirst to prove yourself. I would have put you in Gryffindor, but you are too weak for that house. You are a coward. Your heart tells me that you deserve..."

"SLYTHERIN!!!"

"I told you..." Riddle's voice whispered as everything faded to black and she felt a falling sensation. "You'll never be free of me. I am a part of you, the darkness within your soul. You're mine now."

* * *

Ginny screamed as she sat up, staring blankly at a dark wall. Breathing hard, still half-crazy with absolute terror, she looked around wildly to see that she was back in her own bedroom at the Burrow. She took a very deep breath and let it out slowly, then repeated the process several times until her adrenaline rush was over and she began to calm down. Looking down, she saw that her bedding was askew, shoved almost completely off her bed while she was flailing around in the tight grip of her nightmare. With a sigh, she tugged at her sheets until they were covering her again and attempted to fall back to sleep. Eventually she did, but after a similar nightmare, she gave up and went outside to watch the sun rise.

That was the first night she'd had such a dream, on the very first night of summer. When she awoke the morning after that, tired, pale, and scared senseless, she knew that it was just the first of many horrible nights to come.

She was right.

* * *

For the first week after school let out, Ginny was absolutely miserable. Every time she saw anyone, she could see their unending pity for her, which she could never bear for long. She never had an appetite and barely slept. No conversation with her lasted longer than a few words, as she almost completely refused to speak. She spent all of her time staring blankly at the wall of her bedroom or sitting in the branches of a tree in the nearby forest. She simply couldn't stand being around her family. She hated being seen as weak. She hated their sad gazes and despised their pity. It just made her feel even worse than before.

After two weeks of horrible nightmares and lonely days, she sat at the desk in her room and gazed at a blank piece of parchment, wondering exactly how she was going to word her letter. She eventually just put quill to parchment and hoped it would come out right.

_Professor Dumbledore,_

_I was wondering if you could possibly send me a book on Occlumency or come to the Burrow to teach me yourself. Even though Tom's memories aren't bothering me during the day, I think they're somehow leaking out during the night, because I've had some horrible nightmares about it all. I would wait until the start of term like you asked me to, but they won't stop and they're driving me mad._

_Thank you very much,_

_Ginny Weasley_

She signed the letter and went over it carefully. Her mum had taught her how to be polite while writing a letter, so she figured she should put the lessons to good use when asking Dumbledore for a favor. Deciding that it was up to her mother's standards of politeness and, therefore, probably exceeding Dumbledore's own standards, she sealed it in an envelope and went off to hunt for Errol, hoping he was up for the journey.

She found the owl sitting in his cage. He was sleeping, as usual. She sat in front of the cage and jostled it slightly to wake him up. When he finally opened his eyes, Ginny quickly opened the cage and tied the letter to his leg.

"This is for Dumbledore, alright?" she asked. The owl glanced at her before flying out through the open window, narrowly avoiding a tree. She sighed and hoped that the old, decrepit owl would manage to deliver it without dropping dead.

"HELLO?! HELLO?! CAN YOU HEAR ME?!"

Ron's shout surprised her so much that she fell out of her chair. She quickly recovered and stood up to peer quizzically through the doorway into the kitchen. Ron was holding a telephone handset that her dad had modified to work on magic instead of electricity. Ginny raised an eyebrow as she remembered something her father had said after testing it out for the first time.

"_It's amazing! It's as if they are talking right into your ear!"_

She cringed, imagining that the person on the other end of the phone did not appreciate being yelled at.

"I—WANT—TO—TALK—TO—HARRY—POTTER!!!" Ron shouted at the top of his lungs. Ginny plugged her ears during the outburst and would have fled outside, but she decided that it might be fun to watch this. It was too entertaining to pass up, and not much else had happened yet during the summer, since the infamous twins hadn't stocked up on prank supplies yet. They usually started a few weeks into the summer, after their mum's guard dropped a little and she focused on other things than her troublemaking sons.

"WHO IS THIS?!" a voice bellowed from the phone. "WHO ARE YOU?!"

Ginny cringed. She had heard that voice before on the platform. It was Harry's uncle, who was possibly the meanest person under the best of circumstances. But now, he obviously sounded really hacked off, even worse than most other people would be if you shouted into their ear. Ron, on the other hand, assumed that he was doing the right thing, as his voice didn't drop in volume.

"RON—WEASLEY!!!" he hollered as Ginny cringed and covered her ears again. Harry was going to get into trouble for this. "I'M—A—FRIEND—OF—HARRY'S—FROM—SCHOOL!!!"

_**Bad**__ idea_, Ginny thought. She already knew that the entire Dursley family hated anything to do with magic. Before she could get to her brother to shut him up, she heard Mr. Dursley's reply.

"THERE IS NO HARRY POTTER HERE!!!" Harry's uncle roared, causing Ron to drop the phone in shock. He stared at it in confusion as the man continued to shout, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT SCHOOL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!!! NEVER CONTACT ME AGAIN!!! DON'T COME NEAR MY FAMILY!!!"

Ginny sighed and rolled her eyes as Ron hurriedly hung up. Suddenly she felt a pang of terror as the scar on the back of her neck began to itch terribly. She scratched at it absently and wondered why she felt afraid. The itching was nothing new, as her scar had been itchy for most of the summer, but she didn't have anything to be afraid of, right?

* * *

As the sun slowly began to set, its red-orange glow illuminated a small shape sitting high in the branches of a huge oak tree. Her red hair sparkled in the light, contrasting beautifully with the green leaves, while her face was hidden in shadow. She sat motionless, her mind obviously far away.

Besides that one incident with the telephone, Ginny had felt down all summer. She smiled and joked with her family as usual after her first couple weeks of brooding, but her heart wasn't in it. Her fake smiles and laughter seemed to easily convince her mother and father, even though she had believed at first that they, of all people, would easily see straight through her. Ron, however, she knew wouldn't be a problem. He was too thick to notice that something was wrong with her. She fooled the twins for the most part, though it was more difficult to get it past them. She fooled Percy easily, since he wasn't paying attention to...well...anybody at all except his girlfriend. She believed that she had managed to convince Charlie that everything was fine, though he'd given her a few strange looks from time to time.

And then there was Bill. She sighed as she thought of her oldest brother. Despite the fact that she hardly saw him, despite the fact that he usually lived and worked miles and miles away and rarely had time to visit, he always saw straight through her lies. He always knew how she really felt and what she was really thinking. So it was no surprise that he'd asked her what was wrong several times since he'd come back for a visit last week.

She was very far from being okay. She felt like she didn't belong in her family any more. She felt cut off from everyone. While they were talking and laughing, she couldn't bring herself to feel as they did. She joined in as much as she could, but only half-heartedly. Bill had noticed this and had mentioned it to her several times in private, though she had always managed to deflect his questions and even lie with a straight face.

Tom had always been a good liar.

She sighed again as she watched the Burrow from her tree. She really didn't know where she belonged any more.

"Hey, little one." She looked down to see Bill standing on the ground below her. "Time for dinner."

She tried to smile as she jumped down from the tree, but she knew she wasn't fooling him. She never could.

* * *

Bill watched silently as his baby sister jumped down from the tree, landing on the ground with catlike grace. When she stood up and looked at him, he shivered slightly. Her eyes were not the same innocent, wide eyes he had seen during the last summer when he came to visit. When she gazed at him, he felt uncomfortably like she was boring into his very soul, as if she could read him like an open book. He glanced away and watched as she started wandering listlessly towards the house.

He used to get along really well with his little sister, playing with her and keeping an eye on her as she grew up. He would never admit it to anyone, but she was his favorite sibling of the lot. They had trusted each other completely, always coming to each other if they had any problems. Ginny had asked him for advice many times, about everything from school assignments to dealing with her other older brothers. He'd asked her for advice a couple of times as well. She had been a pretty insightful ten-year-old, after all. She had never been able to lie to him, and he'd thought that she never would.

But now, things were different. She wasn't his little kid sister any more. She had been forced to grow up, forced to witness true evil, and it had changed her drastically. She was no longer a child. She never would be again.

A tear fell from his eye, but he quickly wiped it away and followed his sister back to the Burrow. He silently mourned the loss of her childish innocence as he went inside.

* * *

Ginny could tell without looking back at him that her eldest brother saw straight through her deception, but she couldn't do anything about it except deflect his questions with half-truths. She really wanted to tell him all about it, to have him comfort her in the way that only a big brother can, but she felt as if she couldn't trust him. She wasn't sure if she could trust anybody ever again.

Tom had done much more than merely showing her horrible things and forcing her to grow up. She had come to trust him completely, more than she had ever trusted anybody including her own family. She had told him all of her deepest, darkest secrets (which seemed quite a bit less deep and dark now) and shared the most intimate details of her life, dreams, and nightmares. She had told him about her crush on Harry, about her fear of not living up to her family's expectations..._everything_. She bared her soul for him, and he betrayed her. He corrupted her, violating her mind and soul in a way that left her unable to ever fully recover.

"WE WON!!!"

Ginny blinked as she opened the front door to hear her father's jubilant exclamation. Looking up, she saw him reading a letter with a huge smile on his face. Her eyebrows vanished into her hair when she saw it was from the Daily Prophet.

"We won the grand prize! Seven hundred galleons!"

_Oh, that,_ Ginny realized. She had completely forgotten that her dad entered that contest in the Daily Prophet. She hadn't really been paying attention that day. She was a little preoccupied lately, ever since she woke up in the Chamber of Secrets...

She shook her head. _There I go again,_ she thought. _I'm sick of pitying myself! I'm sick of crying about it! Go away,_ she told her memories of the past year. _Go away and stop bothering me!_

She took a moment to put a convincing smile on her face and decided that she might actually be able to meet his eyes for once. She hadn't looked straight at anybody's eyes in over a month, now. So she looked up and caught his gaze for a moment, and _flash!_

Images, emotions, thoughts not her own, all played across the surface of her mind. Suddenly she knew exactly how her dad wanted to celebrate winning. She knew that he'd be spending a little more time with their mum. She knew that the kids would be going to bed early, and that there would be a silencing charm around their bedroom throughout the night. She saw what he wanted to do with his wife, and what he had done before—

She broke eye contact and ran into her room, sobbing uncontrollably as other memories, memories of Tom's, played across her closed eyelids. Disgusting, horrific images flashed by in her head. She knew, without a doubt, that they were what Tom had shown her in the past, while the thoughts she had seen before were her own father's.

She slept even worse than usual that night.

* * *

It took Ginny another two weeks to figure out what had happened between her and her father that day, because she was distracted from her thoughts when they left for Egypt a week later. She'd been too busy packing and traveling by the International Floo Network, which is incredibly nauseating. Then it happened again when she looked into a stranger's eyes in the Cairo Floo Junction Point. He was a young man with a beautiful wife, but he was cheating on her with another woman. Then her mind moved on after breaking eye contact to some of Tom's own memories, which horrified her every time she saw them.

She finally realized what was happening about a week into their vacation. She knew why she could see other peoples' darkest memories. It was the darkness within her, the part of her that had been forever corrupted by Tom's influence, reaching out and recognizing the darkness within others. It was a wild, uncontrollable, but very specific type of Legilimency. Once she identified the problem though, it was easy enough to fix.

She could never make eye contact again.

"Ginny?"

She blinked and looked up at her brother Bill, focusing determinedly on his left ear. "What?" she asked. "Sorry, but I wasn't really listening. I have a lot on my mind."

"That's alright," he said kindly. "I was just asking if you were sure about going to the tombs with us today. Some of them can be a mite...disgusting. Terrifying, sometimes."

"I've seen worse," Ginny said confidently, flashing one of the fake smiles that fooled nearly everyone into thinking she was still a little, innocent eleven-year-old girl. Bill was the only person who could see through her deception, and the only person who seemed to understand exactly how much she changed. It was no surprise when he simply nodded and left it at that, walking away with a pained expression.

* * *

All nine Weasleys left the inn together to walk to the Pyramids that were visible in the distance. They were quite far away, but nobody really complained. If Bill was right about how cool the tombs really were, everyone agreed that a little exercise was worth it. After a few minutes, they were standing at the foot of a gigantic pyramid.

"The entrances are disillusioned and have weak muggle-repelling charms so that nobody stumbles across them by accident until the cursebreakers are through with the tomb," Bill was explaining as they walked along the side of the pyramid. Finally they stopped at one section of the pyramid that looked just like the rest of it. "All of the cursebreakers have to memorize exactly where the entrance is, or we'd spend an hour looking for it every day, since we're not allowed to break the disillusionment charm..."

Ginny let his words wash over her without really paying attention to what he was saying, and she followed absentmindedly as the whole family walked through the wall like they would through the barrier at King's Cross. When she saw what was inside, she stopped dead and stared.

They were in a large chamber that was strewn with treasure of all kinds. There were gems, precious metals, necklaces, rings, bracelets, and every other kind of jewelry imaginable. In the center was a large sarcophagus.

"Now, there's no need to worry about leftover curses," Bill was saying, though Ginny barely heard him. "This pyramid was cleared last week. However, we're not supposed to take anything at all from it. Feel free to look, but don't touch, and definitely don't take anything out of the Pyramid unless you want to be hit by a nasty anti-thievery curse that we've left intact."

Ginny hid a tiny, but genuine grin as she watched Fred and George sadly pull large amounts of treasure from their pockets to place back where they originally rested. Her Mum was giving them an odd look, as if she were wondering exactly how they'd managed to grab that much stuff within just a few minutes.

"There were some really interesting jinxes on this room and the treasure inside it," Bill whispered to his sister as the rest of the Weasleys looked around in awe. "I took notes on them and thought you might want to take a look. There's some stuff about a few of the other tombs in there too." He grinned as he handed her a small notebook. "You might find something interesting to test out at school. Just promise me you won't tell anyone who you got this from, or Mum will pitch a fit."

Ginny looked up at him with an actual grin on her face. Maybe it wasn't so bad after all, she realized as she flipped through the notebook curiously. Maybe she was all grown up, maybe she couldn't have her childhood back, but she couldn't just let Tom win by ruining the rest of her life. Maybe her life was worth living.

There were no nightmares that night.

* * *

"_Please?_"

Molly Weasley put her foot down. "_No_, Ginny," she said as the small redhead's face fell. "You will _not_ be going with them!"

"But I want to see the skele—" Ginny tried to say.

"It is not a sight fit for a little girl like yourself," her mum answered.

"But I'm not a—"

"No means _no_, young lady! I will not hear another word about it!"

Ginny grimaced as she stomped up to one of the rooms her parents had rented for their stay. She was lucky enough to have her own room, while the rest of her family members were paired up. Her parents had one room, Bill and Charlie had another, the twins had their own, and Ron and Percy had a fourth. While she and her mum were staying in town, the rest of the family was going to see a tomb. Bill had let slip that this one had mutant skeletons with extra limbs and heads due to the curses that used to be there, and Molly Weasley had overheard. She decided that she didn't want to see such a gruesome sight, and despite Ginny's great interest in the cursed skeletons, her mum made her stay behind as well.

The diminutive redhead laid a sheet of parchment on the desk in the room and sat down while thinking about what to write. She had gotten a present for Harry's birthday while in town, and decided to write a letter to go with it. Finally she put quill to parchment and started to write.

When she finished, she folded up the parchment and slid it into an envelope, then attached it to a small box she had wrapped earlier.

"Well," she said to herself, "that wasn't so hard. Now I just need to try to talk to him face-to-face..."

* * *

_**How did you like it? Once again, constructive criticism is not only welcome, but actively encouraged. This is the last chapter with excessive angst, just to let you know. There's around two more chapters of Summer stuff, and then we go back to Hogwarts.**_


	3. Birthdays

_**People who are reading but not reviewing (that means YOU), please at least drop a "great job, update soon" if you've got nothing to say. I mean, this story has twelve reviews total, but 28 people have this on their alert list. Chapter 2 alone has over two hundred hits, but only 4 reviews. Seriously, please review, even if you have nothing to say except to tell me to update ASAP. Numerous reviews are the number one way to motivate me to write better and faster.**_

_**Disclaimer: Anything in here that you've seen in one of the Harry Potter novels is not mine. Anything you haven't seen, however, is totally mine.**_

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_**Resonance**_

_**Chapter 3 – Birthdays**_

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_Tap. Tap-tap-tap._

Harry Potter blinked sleepily and looked around, wondering why he couldn't see anything. It couldn't still be dark outside, could it?

_Tap-tap-tap._

With a quiet groan, he sat up and blinked a few more times until he could keep his eyes open. He reached blindly out to the side and found his glasses resting on the nightstand. His blurry vision cleared dramatically when he put them on.

_Tap._

"I'm coming," he grumbled as he looked at his clock. It was five-bloody-thirty in the morning, which was far too early even for a relatively early riser like himself. With a sigh, he stood and quietly stepped over to his window. An owl he didn't recognize was perched on the sill, tapping incessantly on the glass with its beak. He hurriedly opened the window and watched bemusedly as the owl hopped down to his bed, dropping a package and an envelope to the mattress. After taking a quick sip from Hedwig's water dish, it flew out the window and disappeared into the night without a backwards glance.

Harry absently wandered back to his bed, smiling as he noticed that Hedwig was still fast asleep in her cage, despite the slight commotion earlier. The flight from wherever Hermione was spending her summer at the moment (somewhere in France, he thought) had taken a lot out of her. The Weasley family's old owl, Errol, was in there too, resting up for the long journey back to Egypt, where the family was spending summer vacation.

He smiled as he thought of his friends, and turned to see the smile pile of birthday presents that he had received only a few hours ago, before attempting to go to sleep. Ron's gift was a Pocket Sneakoscope, which could detect untrustworthy people. Hermione's was rather uncharacteristic of her. Instead of a book that only people like her could ever find interesting, she had given him a servicing kit for his broomstick. Hagrid, the abnormally large gamekeeper of his school, had given him a rather odd gift. It was a large tome, called _The Monster Book of Monsters_.

The book was, literally, a monster. It had tried to devour his hand, and he'd been forced to wrap one of his belts around it to keep it closed. Hagrid had a rather odd taste in...well...everything.

Thinking of his presents brought him back to the parcel that sat on his bed. He almost reached out to open it, but went for the accompanying letter instead. On the front of the envelope was his own name in an oddly familiar script. He quickly tore it open and pulled out the piece of parchment within.

_Dear Harry,_

_Happy Birthday! I don't know when you'll get this, but Ron already mentioned that he's using Errol to deliver his gift to you. That poor thing will probably barely make it to you alive, if at all, and I couldn't bear giving him even more weight to carry. So I hired the cheapest (meaning slowest) post-owl I could find. I just hope it's still your birthday when you read this._

_Anyway, I bet you weren't expecting a letter from me at all! I know I've never really talked to you much. At first, I was just too shy. Then...well...you know all about what happened last year. I want to thank you for saving my life at the end of the year. I know that you'll probably play it down and say it was nothing, but I seriously owe you my life. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you._

_Ron probably already told you this, but Dad won a contest! We're spending most of the prize money on a trip to Egypt, but since Ron broke his wand last year, we're saving a little for his new one. The pyramids here are amazing, and the curses that were put on them to keep Muggles away are absolutely brilliant!_

_Everyone else is off in one of the tombs. Mum wouldn't let me go because there's supposed to be dead bodies that are all mutilated by the curses that used to be on the tomb. You know...skeletons with extra heads or arms...things like that. As if I didn't see worse last year in Tom's memories. She still can't get over the fact that I'm not a little girl any more._

_I hope you are having a relatively wonderful summer and that the Muggles aren't as bad as they were last year. Let me know what you think of my present!_

_Ginny_

He was stunned, to say the least. He'd hardly spoken to Ginny before, so he hadn't expected anything at all from Ron's little sister. She'd never really said much around him. He was surprised to see that she actually had a lot to say in her letter after she opened up a little.

With a smile, he unwrapped the parcel that came with the letter. He was surprised to see that it contained a book, and wondered for a moment if Hermione's and Ginny's gifts had been switched somehow. Then he saw the title and grinned.

_One Thousand Extreme Quidditch Moves_

"Wicked," he mumbled as he looked at the picture on the cover of a Quidditch player flying upside down barely inches from the ground. He opened it up to a description of the Reiter Reversal.

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She was standing in a hallway. The people in the paintings on the walls watched her silently as she walked down the corridor. It was empty and dark. All of the students that would normally have been walking through here were fast asleep in their beds.

Her vacant eyes did not wander. They focused straight ahead, on the door at the end of the hallway, as her feet slowly carried her forward. Her pale hand reached out and pushed the door open, revealing a large bathroom. She walked past several sinks before stopping and turning to look into the mirror.

A scrawny little girl stared back at her. She had fiery red hair, though it was looking duller than usual. Her skin was ghostly pale, making her freckles stand out. Her eyes were glazed over, as if she weren't entirely there. She spent a moment watching her reflection before she bent down to examine the tap. It only took her a moment to find the tiny image of a snake scratched into the copper metal.

Her mouth opened, but instead of speaking she hissed like a snake. The tap began to glow and spin, and the sink slid down into the floor, revealing a large pipe behind it. Without hesitating, she slid down the pipe and into the darkness.

It was a long ride down, going even below the dungeons. When she came out at the end, she slid a short way across the ground before coming to a stop. After getting up, she began to walk forward again.

She soon reached a solid wall with two entwined serpents decorating it. With another quiet hiss, the snakes parted to reveal a hole in the wall. She stepped through to see a huge, empty chamber, with massive carved pillars on both sides. She began to walk yet again, until she finally stopped in front of a massive statue.

"Speak to me, Slytherin," she hissed as loud as she could, "greatest of the Hogwarts Four."

The mouth of the massive statue opened, and a monster stirred within.

"Find Harry Potter," she ordered it. "Find him and kill him."

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Ginny woke up screaming for the second time that night. She was breathing frantically, her heart beating like a drum as she looked left and right, afraid that a basilisk was hiding in the shadows. It took several minutes for her to calm down enough to notice that she was in her rented room at the inn. She was nowhere near the Chamber. There was no basilisk concealed in the shadows. It was just a normal, average room.

With an exasperated sigh, she stood up and opened her window, letting the fresh air wash over her. It was still early morning, she realized when she glanced at the clock and groaned with annoyance, but there was no way she could get back to sleep any time soon. Even though she had begun to cheer up with Bill's help, she could not get rid of the nightmares. They followed a pattern now. One night, she would dream that she was letting out the basilisk. The next night, she was back in the chamber, along with a dead body. It was always someone she knew. A professor. A friend. A brother. A parent.

Harry.

She stuffed her face into her pillow and screamed for all she was worth, beating her fist against the mattress. When she ran out of breath, she got out of bed with a tiny smile. Screaming and punching did _wonders_ for her mood.

Her silent musing was cut off by the arrival of an owl. It flew right through her open window and landed upon her dresser, dropping its heavy burden. She barely had time to blink in sleepy confusion before it flew back through the window and vanished in the darkness outside. Curious, she walked over to her desk and looked at the heavy package it had dropped for a moment before discovering a letter beneath it. She decided to open that first.

_Miss Weasley,_

_I apologize for your difficulties this summer. I am unfortunately unable to get away long enough to assist you, as my various duties as Headmaster leave me absolutely no time to myself. However, I did as you asked and sent you a book on the subject. If the nightmares become noticeably better or worse after you read the book and begin practicing, please owl me at your earliest convenience. When you arrive at Hogwarts in September, I wish to meet with you in person to determine your progress and schedule additional lessons on the subject if necessary._

_Best Wishes,_

_Albus Dumbledore_

She ripped open the package and smiled slightly in anticipation when she saw that it contained a book about Occlumency. Completely forgetting the early hour, she lit a candle and settled down to begin reading, hoping that she could get rid of her nightmares soon.

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Several hours later, when the sun was just beginning to rise outside, Ginny was still reading. She was about a quarter of the way through the gigantic tome. Her eyes were half-closed, and she was yawning periodically. She had decided not to bother going back to sleep after her nightmare, since she would just toss and turn for a few hours before giving up. So she had devoted herself to learning Occlumency.

She discovered from her reading that there were actually two different kinds of Occlumency. The first kind involved clearing the mind to protect it from those skilled in Legilimency, the art of reading minds. It was much harder than it sounded, as it involved keeping calm in the face of a mental assault. The second type of Occlumency, the type that Ginny was trying to learn, was easier, though it typically took much longer to learn. It involved visualizing a "mindscape," as the book called it, or an inner world within your own mind, where your thoughts and memories could be visualized. Then you could organize your memories to make them easier to remember, or lock them away so you wouldn't have to see them unless you wanted to.

It sounded incredibly complicated, but the book assured her that it was simpler than it seemed. She doubted it, but she decided that she had to at least make an attempt. With a sigh, she pushed the book away from her and closed her eyes, attempting to focus inward. It shouldn't be too hard, right?

Her arm was itchy.

She absently scratched her arm until the itch went away, and then tried to meditate again.

A muscle in her shoulder twitched.

After a quick stretch and a bit of movement to work out that annoying twitch, she settled down again.

"GINNY! WAKE UP! WE'RE LEAVING SOON!"

Ginny groaned and opened her eyes. Meditating was apparently a lot harder than she thought it would be.

The redhead sighed as she stood up, snapping her new book shut. She had totally forgotten that this was their last day in Egypt. They were going back to the Burrow for the rest of the summer.

She glanced around her room and groaned. Somehow, her clothes, books, and other possessions had ended up strewn all about the room. She stood up and started cleaning up as fast as she could, tossing everything she could find back into her trunk, not bothering to pack things in neatly.

"Ginevra Molly Weasley! Hurry up! We'll be late!"

Ginny gritted her teeth in frustration as she shoved the last of her clothes into her trunk. She attempted to close it, but it stubbornly refused to latch shut. She took a few steps back, and then took a flying leap, landing on top of her trunk with just enough force to shut it completely. She was satisfied to hear the latch click and stood up to drag it out of her room and downstairs. Her parents and the rest of her family were all waiting by the inn's fireplace. A large, warm fire was flickering merrily in the hearth.

"Late for what?" Ron asked curiously. "Aren't we just going back home?"

"I want to get home before noon," their mum answered succinctly. "Now, do hurry up!"

Bill hugged them all in succession. When he got to Ginny, he leaned down and whispered, "Check out page fourteen of the notebook I gave you. I think you'll like it."

When she nodded, he grinned and Disapparated. Charlie went next. Since he was going all the way to Romania, he used the Floo instead of simply Apparating. So he tossed in some powder, watched as the fire turned emerald green, and stepped in.

"Romanian Dragon Preserve!" he shouted. The flames consumed him and he vanished from sight.

Molly looked expectantly at one of the twins. "Hurry up, Fred," she prodded.

"I'm _George_, Mum!" the twin in question exclaimed. He gestured at his identical twin, shouting "_He's_ Fred!"

"Sorry, George," she apologized, used to this sort of thing from the twins. "Just hurry up and go!"

He grinned as he stepped into the bright green flames. "The Burrow!" he shouted, and vanished.

"Go on, Fred," Molly sighed.

"_I'm_ not Fred!" he retorted. "I'm _George_!"

"But your twin said _he_ was George!"

"I reckon he was lying then. The Burrow!"

The flames roared, almost drowning out the angry exclamation of the Weasley matriarch. Ginny hid a grin as her mother rounded on Percy, which simply shook his head in exasperation as he stepped into the fire. Ron went after him, and finally it was Ginny's turn.

"Now don't forget, dear. You must speak _clearly_," her mother was telling her.

"I'm not a _five_-year-old, Mum," Ginny grumbled. "I've used Floo powder before, you know."

She sighed as she stepped into the flames.

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Ginny tumbled head over heels out of the fireplace at the Burrow. At the last possible moment, she turned her fall into a somersault and landed in a crouch. She stood up, smiled at the twins as their eyes widened in astonishment, took a step, and tripped. This time, she had no option but to hit the floor face-first.

"I have to say, Ginny..." one of the twins started to say.

"That was an excellent recovery," the other twin finished.

"Now that you can do gymnastics..."

"Perhaps you should learn to walk."

"Shut up," Ginny grumbled as she stood up. Before the twins could reply, their parents stumbled out of the fireplace. Ginny took advantage of the twins' distraction to slip away up to her bedroom. With a loud sigh, she collapsed onto her bed and stared up at the ceiling for a while. Her thoughts drifted.

Her fists clenched as rage welled up inside her. She picked up her pillow and threw it as hard as she could across the room, but it didn't help much. She took a deep breath and tried to calm down, but her anger refused to go away. Flashes of thoughts that weren't her own drifted across the surface of her mind, but fled before she could get a good look at what they were. At first, she assumed it was Tom's influence again, but she quickly discarded that theory. It was something else entirely.

After a while, though she wasn't sure exactly how long it had been, she managed to calm down. Her face was bright red and she was breathing heavily as she wondered what had just happened. She had occasionally been feeling odd emotions all summer that never fit with how she should have been feeling. Once while in a pyramid, she had been looking at some of the hieroglyphics when she suddenly felt terrified of something. She had been shaking with fear and looking around frantically for several minutes before she managed to calm down.

She knew these emotions weren't her own, as they felt oddly detached when they showed up, but she felt them anyway, and she had no idea why.

With a sigh, she rummaged through her trunk, which had been brought up into her room by her mum at some point during her quiet introspection. Finally, she reached a black notebook and pulled it out, flipping absently to the page Bill had suggested. As her eyes caught the title, she grinned, anticipating her revenge on the twins for the next time they pranked her.

_The Bat-Bogey Hex_

_Causes victim's bogeys to leak out of the nose, enlarge, grow wings, and proceed to attack the victim's face for up to ten minutes. This was modified into an enchantment placed on a doorway in a tomb filled with numerous other irritating, but oddly nonlethal, spells. Perhaps the Pharaoh entombed here had a sense of humor?_

_Incantation: Nasus Vespertilio (verbal or nonverbal)_

_Wand Motion: varies, but a figure-eight and flick tends to get the best results._

"Nasus Vespertilio," she mumbled, carefully sounding out the word. She repeated it several times until she thought she was pronouncing it correctly. With a grin, she marked the page and placed the notebook on her nightstand. With a little work and a bit of magic, she could be prepared for the next time the twins teased her.

She shifted around on her covers and decided that now would be a good time to attempt Occlumency again. With that thought, she closed her eyes and began to meditate.

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"Sirius Black!"

Ginny frowned when she heard her father say the name right after arriving at home. It sounded familiar, somehow.

"What about him?" Molly asked as she bustled around the kitchen, preparing dinner.

"The Ministry's in an uproar," Arthur answered. "Apparently, Sirius Black managed to escape from Azkaban and is now at large!"

"But...nobody's ever managed to..."

"I know, Molly. Somehow, he was able to escape. Rumor has it he's after..." Her father stopped and glanced toward his youngest daughter, looking slightly awkward.

"Ginny, dear," her mother said, "would you please go outside and let your brothers know that it's time for supper? They should be out in the paddock."

Ginny sighed. "Okay, Mum, I'll go," she replied as she stood up and left the kitchen through the back door. Instead of continuing off to the makeshift Quidditch pitch that her brothers liked to practice on, she leaned against the wall right next to the door and listened carefully.

"Rumor has it he's after Harry," Arthur continued once he believed that Ginny was gone. "The Minister went to inspect Azkaban, and while he was there, he heard Sirius mumbling in his sleep. He kept repeating, 'He's at Hogwarts,' over and over. You know he was one of You-Know-Who's followers. He probably blames Harry for His downfall thirteen years ago."

"Is Harry safe?"

"Well, we had a bit of a scare about an hour ago, to tell you the truth. He ran away from home after accidentally blowing up his aunt."

"_What?!_"

"The Minister himself found the boy and rented him a room in the Leaky Cauldron for the rest of the summer. Don't worry. He'll be fine, since he won't leave Diagon Alley. There are so many other wizards there that Black cannot hope to find Harry without being seen. Everything is alright."

The conversation moved on after a few moments to some of the raids Ginny's dad had conducted during the day. Deciding that there was nothing more worth listening to, she left the house and went off to find her wayward brothers, thinking deeply about her father's news.

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Ginny woke up several days later with a pitiful groan. She was _not_ ready to face the day. It was far too early to be moving around, but for some reason she couldn't get back to sleep. So it was with a befuddled mind and half-closed eyes that she wandered downstairs.

"Could I have some breakfast, Mum?" she asked as she sat heavily down at the table, staring at the wall right in front of her.

"Sure...um...just one moment..."

Her mother sounded hesitant and slightly perplexed. Ginny looked up in confusion and was even more bewildered to see party decorations strewn throughout the room. There were several balloons, some streamers, and a big banner that said _HAPPY BIRTHDAY!_ She looked at the banner for several minutes before turning to look back at her mum.

"What day is it?" she asked curiously. "Whose birthday..."

She frowned and started listing off her brothers in her mind. Bill and Charlie were gone. Percy's birthday was only a week before the start of term. The twins were born on April first. Ron was born in March. That left...

"It's my birthday?!" she exclaimed in surprise.

"Of course it's your birthday!" one of the twins shouted from behind her. She rolled her eyes as they both sat at the table.

"George, I fear she's gone insane!"

"Fred, I think you might be right!"

"Who could possibly ever forget..."

"Their own birthday?"

Ginny rolled her eyes and ignored their antics. Lately, she had taken to repeating _Bat-Bogey Hex...Bat-Bogey Hex..._ in her mind whenever they annoyed her. Soon, very soon, she would have her revenge, once they were out of sight of her mum, who would pitch a fit if she saw Ginny hexing her brothers.

Despite its slow start, her birthday was quite a lot of fun. After breakfast, the twins and Ron had taken her outside for a simplified game of Quidditch. Ginny played Chaser, with Ron on her team as Keeper. Fred and George played against them. Ginny ended up losing to the twins' superior teamwork, but she played well and it was a narrow loss. After that, they had a few broom races around the paddock and through the forest. She won as often as she lost.

When the Sun started to set, they trooped back inside for a massive feast and a delicious cake. There was a chorus of Happy Birthday, the lyrics of which were mangled hideously by the twins. She received a lot of gifts from everyone in her family. Bill sent her a small ankh pendant that he'd been allowed to take from a tomb. Charlie sent her a pair of dragonhide boots with a warming charm on them for wintertime. Percy and Ron both gave her a bunch of Chocolate Frogs, while the twins provided her with a wealth of joke products from Zonko's. The gift from her parents, however, was by far her most favorite. When she had opened up the long, thin package to see a Cleansweep Five, the same kind of broom as the ones that the twins flew, she squealed in delight and jumped up to hug her parents. Apparently her father had confiscated it from a Muggle who was using it as an ordinary broom. As it was not technically a Muggle artifact, but rather a magical device confiscated from a Muggle, he was allowed to keep it.

She immediately ran outside and towards the paddock that was blocked off by a bunch of trees. It wouldn't do for the Muggle residents of Ottery St. Catchpole to see her flying on a broom. The moment she reached the makeshift Quidditch pitch, she mounted the broom and was in the air. It flew _much_ better than the old Shooting Star that she usually used whenever her brothers invited her to fly with them. It flew faster, turned sharper, and stopped quicker than any broom she'd ever flown before. Now she knew why the twins refused to let anyone else fly their own Cleansweeps. She didn't plan to ever let her new broom out of her sight.

"Ginny!"

She jerked in surprise and almost fell off her broom when she heard the twins calling her. She dove towards the ground and pulled up at the last second, coming to a stop before reluctantly hopping off and walking the last few feet towards her brothers.

"Finally! We only shouted your name..."

"Five times!"

"Were you thinking about..."

"A certain green-eyed someone?"

Ginny frowned. "I was _not_!" she exclaimed as her face grew red.

They grinned. "Liar," they spoke in unison.

"You _were_ thinking about him, of course."

"Hey, brother mine, do you remember her poem?"

"Of course! _His eyes are as green as a fresh picked toad..._"

"_His hair is as dark as a blackboard..._"

"_I wish he was mine..._"

"_He's really divine..._"

"_The hero who conquered the Dark Lord,_" they finished in unison.

Ginny growled as she reached into a pocket and pulled out her wand. The twins looked at the slender piece of hazel wood, frowning, then looked back at her.

"You can't use magic outside of school, you know," one of them said.

"You could be expelled!"

"Yeah, right," Ginny replied. "I already know that you've figured out a way around that particular rule. As long as we're close enough to the Burrow, the Ministry has no idea who actually cast the spell. I know you two have been using magic since the summer after your first year, and we've only gotten notes for stuff you did while off our property."

"Fine, you caught us red-handed."

"So, what spell could you possibly cast on us?"

"I mean, you've only been in Hogwarts for a year..."

"So you can't know any particularly devastating spells, right?"

Ginny grinned and began to wave her wand in a figure-eight motion. "Nasus Vespertilio," she spoke carefully, flicking her wand at the twin who she thought was Fred. Before anything happened, she waved her wand again and flicked it at George, repeating the incantation. The twins stood there for a moment, wondering exactly what she had done, as they had never heard that spell before.

Then their noses forcefully expelled a large amount of snot, which enlarged, grew wings and started attacking their faces. They shouted incomprehensibly and ran away. Ginny just smiled at them.

It was officially her best birthday ever.

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_**Next chapter is the last chapter of summer, and may incorporate the train ride as well. Please review, as more reviews means faster updates! If you have anything to criticize, please do so. Constructive criticism is not only welcomed, but actively encouraged. Flames will be mocked or ignored, depending on my mood at the time.**_


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